标签归档：password complexity

On most Linux systems, you can use PAM (the “pluggable authentication module”) to enforce password complexity. If you have a file named /etc/pam.d/system-auth on RedHat (/etc/pam.d/common-password on Debian systems), look for lines that look like those shown below.

By default, passwords must have at least six characters (see /etc/login.defs for possible changes). This is hardly long enough by current standards to consider passwords to be secure. You will have a much stronger password complexity policy if you change the first line to something like this, requiring longer passwords and ensuring a degree of complexity as well.

try_first_pass = sets the number of times users can attempt setting a good
password before the passwd command aborts
minlen = establishes a measure of complexity related to the password length
(more in a moment on this)
lcredit = sets the minimum number of required lowercase letters
ucredit = sets the minimum number of required uppercase letters
dcredit = sets the minimum number of required digits
ocredit = sets the minimum number of required other characters
difok = sets the number of characters that must be different from those in the
previous password

That said, minlen is actually a measure of complexity, not simply length. It specifies a complexity score that must be reached for a password to be deemed as acceptable. If each character in a password added one to the complexity count, then minlen would simply represent the password length but, if some characters count more than once, the calculation is more complex. So let’s see how this works.继续阅读 →